The importance of UMD to PSP and its future *spinoff

I should have made clear that was a hyperbole. I only knew about sharp, JVC, samsung ; so rather than a short handful vendors, there were 4x that amount - this still is totally dwarfed by CD, cassette and DVD formats.
Virtually no vendors from US, Europe, China, taïwan, thailand etc. whereas the audio cassette it competed with had players made everywhere, even in Soviet Union .

 

Why not a 1.8" hard drive?
you may have two models, one with 16GB flash and another one with a 120GB hard drive. with a single component providing as much storage as 80 full UMD disks, problem solved.

 

See, Neo, you missed a few opportunities in the course of this thread. First one was when you heard me saying HAL and you asked your friend about it, to which they reportedly laughed. Instead of taking that for an answer (is you friend's name Iwata, btw?), you should've asked them what they used for creating and managing their GE display lists in their commercial titles (assuming they have such). That would have already shed some light for you.

Second missed opportunity is you actually not reading my posts carefully enough (go re-read what i said about libgu, it's not a sequel to anything).

Third one was when you said that even if you knew what your were talking about re ME, you'd still not bother send a simple proof of your understanding to me (apparently you'd rather pull irrelevant homebrew lore from around the internet). Way to make me willing to share anything with you.

And now you want me to back up something which i would not need back up in the first place, if the other party was in the loop. I'm not sure how i feel about it right now. I could, however, share with you that a HAL is not what you think it is - something that is mandatory by definition. Some HAL implementations could be mandatory just as well, but that's not part of the definition of what HAL is. HAL is a software layer over some metal, which layer allows the next sw layer after it to not deal with the full extent of the metal's programming model. as such HAL is normally used to hide reasonable differences (ie. ones not entirely breaking the programming model) in variations of the metal. libgu (and a few other libs in the sdk) is not strictly HAL when looked at in isolation on the psp (not because of what you claim but just because there are no different implementations of the GE whose peculiarities would need to be hidden), but libgu would effectively serve as a HAL when one looks at the psp and its successor, given the latter needed to have BC. Simply because the common psp title does not need to talk right to the metal, instead its talks to those libs. Mind you, my first post mentioning HAL was in the context of why the psp successor would not need to host the original GE silicon, which you thought it would instead.

 

An SGX543MP that's comparable in size in 45/40nm or smaller geometries to the PSP's GPU and is as relatively aggressive with its clock rate could emulate the PSP's GPU in its sleep.

 

75% of the world doesn't have access to PSPs, and couldn't afford it even if they had. Plus why does losing the UMD require going DD only? As plenty have suggested, Sony can go the Nintendo route and use carts of some form. Job done, serving both conventional buyers and the DD future.

Poor DS owners don't have that option. No wonder it sells so badly.

 

I'm not sure why there is an arguement.

Flash has advantages.

1) Speed . Memry stick pro duo is capable of 15MB/s. Umd trasnfers at 11mbps or 1.375 MB/s

2) Size. While UMD had the intial size advantage of 1.8gigs for dirt cheap , flash has continue to grow and now you can get 16 gigs for $40 bucks. Which is why we see the psp go hit the scene.

3) Durability . Not only is the flash much more durable than a spining disc , but the slot for the memory stick is more durable than the drive for the umd. You have the actual door to insert the disc which can easily break or jam , but then you have the optical eye that can get dislodged easily in a handheld system.

4) Power drain. Flash uses much less power than a spinning disc.



Umd seems to have 2 advantages

1) Cost. Its much less money to make a umd

2) Size at launch. While 2 gig cards were avaible they were very expensive. Umds offered 1.8gigs at very low prices.



I don't see an arguement moving into the future for the continued existance of umd. Even if they move to a bluray mini type device its not worth it.

On a hand held downloadable games will be much more popular why carry a bunch of discs when you can carry them all with you on a few memory sticks that in a case might take up the space of 1 umd.

 

What precisely are we all bitching about here?

Seems the list goes...

1.) UMD is irrelevant.

2.) ME is a multi-purpose processor.

3.) There is no HAL.

4.) Memory Stick isn't an option.

5.) PSP2 will require UMD because SONY demands backwards compatibility.

6.) Nothing can emulate the godlike power of the PSP!!! Atleast in mobile form.

7.) Without UMD, backwards compatibility won't work...

For starters, UMD is irrelevant. It serves no real purpose anymore. Memory stick can store many times more, for prices similar enough. Games rarely even take up the entire disk. And if they did, would it still matter? Some 360 titles are smaller on disk, and still look superior to their Xbox brethren.

Virtually any processor can be tricked to do a job it is not specifically architected for, ME is no different. ME was designed to be a media engine, hence the name. Does that bar me from writing a calculator program for it? No. Does that bar me from writing a shitty little renderer for it? No. Does the SDK specifically state it to be usable for those myriad purposes? Not IIRC.

Darkblu's been trying to explain, if there's a software layer that you write to, that then commands the hardware, that *IS* the very definition of a HAL. So by definition there is a HAL present. There's no argument, there! For eph's sake!

Memory stick is a fine option. It's relatively cheap, capacious, has fast transfer, and can be pretty damned secure. Sounds like it hits just about all the requirements.

Backwards compatibility... SONY has de-prioritized backwards compatibility so far it's not even worth mentioning, and it hasn't really damaged them that badly, if at all. Hell, MS borderline dropped it, mid-sentence, and they're by all accounts fine for it. So no real need for UMD here either.

Sorry, also not true. We have mobile GPUs that here soon will make the PSP's performance look quaint by comparison. The GPU part inside Tegra 2, trounces the hell out of it, and it's basically a matter of writing a wrapper for the programs to live inside. There are mobile CPUs a dozen times more powerful than the one inside the PSP, ZMS-08 for example, and again you could probably write a wrapper for the games as they are. Shit we could feasibly build a handheld today that beats the original Xbox to hell and back, let alone a PSP.

And maybe it won't - Not everyone in the world has a fast connection to the web to obtain those somewhat large files, but it's not killing MS and SONY's current home consoles, and I really don't think SONY views backwards compatibility as a major priority anymore. Their actions certainly don't seem to indicate so - Quite the contrary, they view it as a way for consumers to avoid buying new titles, which screws them painfully.

 

They can go with free 3g connections or even 4g connections (sprint has it) for the psp2 and limit it to downloading games only.

They can then charge monthly for 3g/4g for wireless gaming or allow it through wireless network connections.

I'm not sure how large people are expecting mobile games to grow. Perhaps to xbox 360 game sizes ? Which would be 6.8 gigs or less. I'm betting on less because content costs money and devs can't sell a psp2 game at $60 bucks like they can an xbox 360 game.

 

People who compare the graphics of the PSP to phones and believe that PSP technology is "still" relatively powerful make the mistake of assuming the sizes and power consumption are at all similar between the GPUs of the those different classes of device.

The top mobile GPU architectures of the PSP's time were more effective and would've scaled to much greater performance if budgeted to a comparable cost to the PSP's GPU. So, a modern mobile graphics architecture like Series5XT would yield a core so much more powerful when scaled to that kind of silicon budget and power consumption envelope.

 

When you play a MP3 on the PSP and have the visualization on, which processors are being used?

 

Running a game from a memory stick isn't a million miles from using a cart or card (variable access times apart). You could get value for money from a PSP without ever bringing a UMD within a mile of it.

As Shifty Geezer already said "why does losing the UMD require going DD only?"

Nintendo do all of the above without putting mechanical drives on their incredibly popular and profitable handhelds. Also, the iPhone has been incredibly popular while doing none of the above. Sony will be thinking very carefully about where they target the PSP2 to make the most money.

Looking at what has worked, and what hasn't, it's hard to see Sony believing that they need UMD going forwards. Media loading mechanical drives on small, portable devices are a thing of the past.

I doubt Nintendo built your UMPC with an N64 emulator in mind, or even that they tried particularly hard to get their N64 emulator running fast.

What is it that the PSP graphics chip does that couldn't map to a DX 9 shader? Could you ask your PSP dev friend? I be interested to know.

I'm getting a bit confused now. Why does the PSP2 need to cost $900?

So they should have put a UMD drive on there, to increase screen size and battery life for free?? Just because Sony went in a certain direction with the Go doesn't mean that UMD drives don't cost money, take up space and draw power.

That will have nothing to do with the GPU though.

 

Actually, the sdk goes a bit firther than that ; )

1. It does not present the programming model of the ME processor - for the sdk it's just an AV-processing blackbox (how's that for not saying what it's useful for? ; )
2. It does not provide means for running threads on it (last time i checked homebrew does it through hacking into kernel mode). Which is only logical, given the unit is not exposed as programmable.
3. It does not provide tools for debugging code running on that processor. And given (2) and (3) - why would it? ; )

So you say you have a product to ship? Good luck doing that with no programming model, no established code deployment protocol and no debugging!

But this is just what the sdk does not do. And it's just a minor nuisance compared to the next obstacle.

As we all know (sans certain hyperactive posters), there's one other aspect of the whole process called releasing commercial games, and it's passing the console vendor's TRC. Hacking your way into the ME would be a really spectacular way for a licensed developer to fail their TRC. I would really, really love to hear the success story of some psp dev who actually tried that : )

 

Nonsense. You really think Sony execs sat around the board room saying, "C'mon guys! No matter what, we have to find some media other than those damned little carts"?

Sony had a need for a distribution method for their portable media and games device. They weighed up the pros and cons of different formats. They wanted 2GBs or thereabouts for their intended movie format, which would have meant very expensive carts of some form. There was also an issue of piracy which carts were open to. Hence they developed a new optical format.

For their next platform, they will consider the options once again. There will be cost, impact on the portable's key performance, scalability and versatility considerations, etc. They'll then pick the right media they feel for the job. They certainly aren't going to flatly refuse carts. Again, which you've conveniently ignored, Nintendo make a killing on carts. Carts aren't a dead format, and no-one but yourself would dismiss them out of hand without a proper consideration of costs and benefits for the different formats.

 

It would be interesting to see the average amount of space a PSP game takes up on a UMD.

 

Several hundred MBs AFAIK. Next-gen, 2 to 4 GBs will be plenty for most cases I reckon. You could even start off with a cheaper 2GB cartupper limit and then allow for larger carts once prices have dropped, if they start to high, like the old Megabit cartridges of yore.

 

Why even go with a cart.

Just install 64 ggs of flash into the system and just download games. Even those who don't have broad badn. Just go into a gamestop or a toys r us and go by a ps3 kiosk or psp 2 kiosk and download the game and have it charged to your credit card or if you don't have a credit card buy a game code from the store and input it.

How do the stores make money ? Give them a bit of each transaction.

 

Oh it's certainly possible, but is it worth it to try to force an unfamiliar distribution model on your customers to save 2$ worth of flash? Whether you sell on carts in stores or not is irrelevant to whether you offer DDL versions as well.